Category: life

here we are again

sumacandmilkweed1 Comment
mid-October, morning moonset over Lake Michigan (film, Mamiya C220)

I wrote about my sadness, anger, frustration (I’m using gentle words, but I promise my feelings are much, much stronger) eight years ago. We had different information back then, but now I think we know what’s in store.

I am talking with others about our impending four years under the upcoming administration, and we try to make sense of why we are here again. I think I know at least one reason for the profound disconnect between the viewpoints of voters: the distrust in news sources, the rise of disinformation, the “news” as being reported by social media personalities rather than journalists (this is called opinion, folks, not news), and the dismantling of any sense of community that results from such divided reporting. This is why, when I and others admit to being bereft this week, we are met with blank stares by those who are celebrating. We are not seeing the same thing, we are not understanding each other — we will in no way arrive at a middle ground because of this.

Of course, it’s far more complex than that. I’m still processing, and I am committed to educating myself by reading and viewing information sources that have teeth, history, and a commitment to fact behind them. But I will not be tolerant of those who think that human rights are not at stake here, and that women and whole communities are not under siege. I will hear your viewpoint if you’ll hear mine, but I won’t let you get away with behaving like we should not all — ALL humans — have the same rights.

There, I’ve said that, and to my few readers, you know where I stand and can act accordingly.

With that in the open, I will also admit I’m wondering how to move on and still be a part of living, because that’s what we are all doing here on this planet, in whatever country we are in, in our homes and at work and carrying on in our everyday lives. We are all worried about our families, our friends, our partners. We still have bills to pay and living spaces to maintain and money worries and job frustrations and health concerns. We still laugh (we have to) and cry (also a must) and make art or music or love or soup or bread or whatever makes us feel some connection or comfort.

I want to continue seeing beauty where I can, and even if that sometimes feels frivolous, I believe more than ever that it’s important. There is suffering and heaviness, but there is also beauty and joy. We become inhuman when we ignore either one of these things.

sunset and beach grasses gone to seed, Lake Michigan (film, Mamiya C220)

fall, skies, October

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Up until a storm came through yesterday, we were still enjoying unseasonably warm weather in west Michigan, a strange and lucky extension of uncharacteristic fall mildness, or maybe it’s not that at all but an absence of what normally comes in October, which is days on end of moody skies, wild Lake Michigan waves, and rainy days that can send even a rainy-day lover at least a little bit into the blues. Yesterday’s storm ushered that in, though, with heavy rain, a bit of hail, a whipped up lake, October chill.

The past two weeks, most nights the sunset offered so little variation that one day’s sunset looked exactly like the ones before it (calm lake, no clouds). Not to be ungrateful, because every sunset over a large body of water (especially that I get to see with my own eyes) is indeed a gift. But clouds that light up and change the mood and the shape and the tone of the sunset, maybe taking your breath away a bit in the viewing, are a gift wrapped in fancy paper and a bow.

Last week, I drove an hour to the nearest city and finally upgraded a very old but still working fine iPhone, because it was time but also because while I really love my film cameras and am committed to capturing most everything with them, my phone is what I end up using to photograph sunsets, clouds, and quickly changing skies, and my old iPhone’s camera was tired.

So lucky, lucky me, to be here on the lake when the sun experienced a major solar storm (a “burp,” I’ve read) that created colorful waves and ripples in the sky above our heads and north and west across the lake on Thursday night in a display that is still filling me with awe and delight several days later. The colors weren’t this bright as we watched them, but the reds and greens were definitely visible, and the waves and formations were like nothing I’d been lucky enough to see before.

And then Saturday night, as I watched a storm move east towards the beach I witnessed a streaky cloud formation, something I’ve also never seen before and don’t quite know how to explain… dark clouds, lightning on the far horizon, a bright spot within this mass with wispy streaks in it that floated over my head, more streaky cloud formations behind it. I can only offer photos to show as I have no words to explain.

This beauty in the midst of a week where a second hurricane brought more destruction to the south, where people I know hunkered down and hoped for the best. Sometimes I don’t know how to reckon with the devastation amidst the wonder, weather-wise and otherwise.

The obvious other changes of season are in full swing, like the grasses beginning their shift from green to gold, the trees dropping their (not yet colorful) leaves, the milkweed opening its pods and wispy umbrellas carrying seeds off on windy gusts, the sumac gone a deep magenta. As I’ve said, every season here has magic.

I feel less and less a social being the more time I spend here.

To combat my tendency toward hermitism (maybe not an official word, but I’m using it), we invited the neighbors for dinner last night. I ran out for a few things and then spent a few hours making a roasted butternut squash soup, a big salad, and what turned out to be a bit too dense apple pecan bread (no one complained and only a sliver is left this morning). I surprised some sleeping kittens when I went to my favorite farm market to get butternut squash for the soup (they were happy to wake up, let me scratch them, then followed me around for a few minutes before they curled right back up and fell back to sleep).

kittens at the farm stand

I also have taken today off, just for me, because even though I start each year promising myself I’ll use my (generous, unlimited) PTO, I never do (I’ll keep trying). So today I’ll drive into town to meet a friend for coffee, maybe do some painting, finish a book, walk or hike somewhere, take a film camera out and see if I can capture some of the fall colors, that is if the clouds clear up. This sounds just right for today.

off you go, then

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Here you get to know just what an awful person I really am. This is my favorite month. After a summer of loads of people on the beach, last weekend marked the end of summer, and I am thrilled. Clearly I’m turning into an antisocial hermit, but I’ll just have to lean into that and quit apologizing for my love of places that are mostly devoid of humans. I get to hear the waves, the gulls, my own thoughts, the crows, the wind, the crickets, all the natural sounds of this Lake Michigan shoreline. The summer-only folks close up their cottages, the renters disappear, the beach gets scrubbed clean by the wind. Ahhhhh.

summer storm cloud over Lake Michigan (Mamiya C220, expired Portra film)

Okay, I won’t lie—in the off-season when I’m here alone for more than a few days, it does get a bit lonely. Still, I love it best when it feels like almost no one else is here along this stretch of beach, the biting wind kissing my face alone.

Lonely and alone, though. Two words most associate with melancholy, sadness, maybe defiance, possibly abnormality. I am regenerated by being alone, and I never used to feel lonely until the last several years. Oddly, I rarely feel lonely when I am alone, though… for me, loneliness creeps in when I’m with other people but am not feeling any connection. Is this my age, or something collective in our human experience? I’m not sure.

chamomile (Minolta SRT-102, very expired Ritz Camera film)

In any case, the week here was warm and full of all the things you want a stretch of beach to be, with warm, swimmable water, a broad beach to walk on, gorgeous sunsets. Until the rain came and the temperature dropped yesterday, a reminder of fall to come.

poppies (Mamiya C220, Lomochrome Turquoise)

Today dawned cool and windy with clouds that lingered into the early afternoon and cleared to a stellar blue sky as I write this in the early evening, with soup on the cooktop using all the local veggies I could find at the farm stands. I have settled into no longer being a student, and I’m happy to report I feel much more comfortable about that than I did in my last posts. And since that writing, I’ve devoured over a dozen books, mainly novels, some poetry, too. I mostly abandoned novels over the past few decades, favoring nonfiction instead, but there’s a shift in me and somehow dystopian—or more dark, or somewhat askew—novels are really drawing me in. Books that are a little unsettling but still melodious, hopeful, cheerful still in some way. The book I finished this morning after reading late into the last three nights was just that. Hours later, I’m still feeling part of the storyline, the characters and their habitats still within reach.

fern in forest (Minolta SRT-102, very expired Ritz Camera film)

All of this to say I still have more time on my hands than I’m used to. Reading is helping, but I have art supplies I have yet to bring out, and poor excuses for not bringing them out. So that’s on my list this weekend, but first I had a burst of using up some film in July and didn’t get around to posting much other than a few images in my last two posts, so adding a few here. More film, more art. That’s what I’m hopeful for in the coming months and years. Finding myself again, or maybe rediscovering.

forest trees with Cokin super speed filter (same Minolta/expired film combo)

I can’t sleep, and the library

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post-sunset sky, Lomochrome Turquoise film, Mamiya C220

I don’t know if it’s excitement to be done with school or nervousness to be done with school (that “what’s next” I just wrote about). Or the pile of books I plan to read and am genuinely giddy about (I already tore through two books over the last four days!). Or an upcoming project I’ve been asked to edit (I am honored, both professionally and personally). Or that when I drove back to the cottage yesterday after being away for a few days, I saw a farmstand with a sign for peaches. Already! Or that I plan to take a break from work one morning this week to pick blueberries at the farm from which I’ve been picking blueberries almost my entire life.

I was at home in the city for the weekend, and I couldn’t sleep there. The bedroom was too warm, the dog nextdoor barked on and off throughout the night from a room below my bedroom window just off their driveway (he doesn’t normally bark throughout the night). And our little city was even quieter than normal—the usual revving engines late into the night was oddly not happening. But I couldn’t sleep last night once I arrived here at the cottage, either, where I usually sleep like a champ, and I can find no obvious reason for that.

The paper I’ve dedicated the last 13 weeks (mainly, but I’ve been thinking about it since I began this masters program) of my life to is about 98% done. I have some finishing touches, a final review, and I plan to turn it in before the end of the week. I’m wondering if once I submit it, that’s when I’ll sleep? We’ll see.

I also reinstated my library card over the weekend. This is A Big Deal, to me, anyway. I grew up going to the library with my mom at least twice a week. She got a break from my brother and I there, sending us off to the kids’ section while she dove into her own books. We went home with armloads of books between us. We were voracious, and the library was our respite from being always stretched thin, money-wise. Unlike at stores, we could get whatever we wanted there, at least up to the limit of what we were allowed to check out at one time. I felt rich walking the three blocks home with my stash of books—all mine.

So of course I took our kids to the library in the city we raised them in, a few miles away from my family home. My kids loved the children’s section with its carpeted claw-foot bathtub for cozy reading. It seems to be less quiet than my hometown library, and it is in a gorgeous historical house. We couldn’t quite walk there when my kids were little, but just after our oldest bumped into double digit ages we moved into a house just a few blocks away from the library, and I became a regular again. Life was busy, though, and my record for returning books on time got mighty shaky, until some years ago I borrowed some books on CD, somehow lost one of the CDs, and found myself too ashamed to go back.

It was easy to buy books online by that point, or at used book stores when I came across them, or by e-reader, so that’s what I did. But I’m trying to be a conscientious consumer these days, and, well, I decided to be brave and go back to the library and see if they would reinstate my card. I have to say, of all the places where one should expect kindness and understanding, a library might top that list. I was (very nicely) reinstated, and instead of walking out with an armful of books I might be lousy about returning on time, I left with directions on how to set up my old e-reader to borrow books. Voila! And maybe this winter when I am in the city more I’ll be brave again and borrow physical books (and set up copious reminders to get them back on time).

what’s next?

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I have a bad case of the now what’s, what’s next’s, where do I go from here’s.

I am two and a half weeks away from being a graduate. At my age! (I say at my age full of irony and mischief, by the way—I’m a firm believer in the idea that no one is too old for bikinis, degrees, art, doing your thing, whatever that thing may be.) But in what feels like the strangest time ever, everything feels so off… I don’t even have words to describe the weirdness of our political, civil, climate outlook. It’s dismal. But the ultimate act of hope is just living, right? Finding some joy and some beauty anyway? Loving the people in our lives, despite all of it.

dried dill flower, early spring

In the spirit of that hope, I am currently finishing my last assignment as a graduate student. Over these two years of reading about employment laws, learning how to understand case law and statute and legal theory, and writing hundreds of pages of responses to hypotheticals and essay tests and my fellow classmates, and now culminating in a research paper that has been varying parts excitement, fun, dread, and horror, I have learned a few things.

One is that I cannot wait to read again (not school books), and I am sorting my stacks of already-owned books in order of how I loosely plan to read them, and have also ordered a handful of new books to add to that list. I am hungry in this respect. I have a mix of books in line—biography, nature, poetry, fiction, essay, short story. Another hunger is that I have to write. Writing brings me ultimate joy. I love it, and I intend to do more of it professionally and personally.

I have also missed my cameras, and while film and developing got more expensive over the several years I’ve mostly not been doing it, I have to incorporate it again into what I do to find joy in these tumultuous times. Beyond that, painting and art-making of whatever sort using the supplies I have. More of this. More of these things.

Little Sable Point Light, early spring

Lastly, I’ve been negligent in nurturing relationships over these two years. I might have been a little selfish, even. If I can spend the rest of the summer making time to sit and talk, making phone calls again, letting people know I love them, I will do these things.

Tomorrow, or the next day, I will tidy the cottage and leave it to my daughter for a few days. I worry about this old house, the tricky washing machine, the winds that pick up quickly and can send a deck umbrella flying, the ants that will find their way to food left on kitchen counters and the swarm of fruitflies that will gather if wine or fruit is left out on a hot, windless day. Mostly I just hate to be away, afraid I’ll miss that one perfect sunset, the best starry night, a fox visiting the deck, an eagle catching a fish just as I look out at the water. And then I remind myself that I already get more of these sightings than most people I know, and there’s more sweetness in sharing them.

Aside from this, here is what I’m finding joy in this week, in no particular order:

  • Local blueberries
  • Lake Michigan is warm enough for comfortable swimming
  • The five rolls of film I mailed off to California for developing reached their destination this week (I can’t wait to get the scans!)
  • I had the most lovely conversation with a coworker about the magic of film this week, and she shared some of her beautiful film images with me
  • I’m putting the finishing touches on my capstone paper

And so back to what’s next. Here’s what I have on tap for the rest of July and into August:

  • Tasking myself with learning how to and making jam next month (blueberry and peach, I think)
  • Reading some books
  • Painting (an art swap with a talented ceramicist is all the motivation I need to get my paints out)
  • Visiting with friends and relatives that will be renting cottages just a few doors away
  • Taking pictures of things I love
  • Taking just a minute to celebrate finishing something I worked hard on for two years
  • Reading about and planning to make jam blueberry or peach jam (or both), which brings me joy because my mom made jam every summer, but it also feels very daunting because it’s a bit of a process, right?
  • Upcoming visits from kids and friends

What are you finding joy in these days, or planning for the rest of your summer? Is there a book you’ve read recently (old or recent) that has particularly moved you? Any tips for jam making (I’m nervous about it!)?

imposters, bears, deer, feathers

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Oh and a hospital and a hotel, too.

I meant to get back here sooner, really. But oh my, this school term, and this last month in particular. Sometimes I wonder if this is the right thing for me, being a student at this time in my life.

Just this week in one of the live classes my professor started class by first asking if we knew what “imposter syndrome” is (why yes) and if any of us ever feel it. I raised my hand, maybe too quickly, as did some others. It led to an enlightening discussion and the professor admitting that she also has felt like an imposter sometimes (brilliant human, many degrees, law professor, writer, speaker, mother). I see her as confident, brilliant, funny, prone to some most excellent tangents in class—the opposite of an imposter. She tried to set some of us straight but also called us out on our perfectionism. Double whammy.

This coming week I am wrapping up my fourth out of six terms in this masters program. I’m still swoony over the program in general, but would be lying if I said this term did not utterly kick my ass. It did. Add on top of it a health crisis for my father, and my own self-imposed perfection as I try to be a good employee and manager, parent to my adult kids, decent partner, caring daughter… well, I’m not doing any of it all that well at the moment.

After a long week sleeping in a hotel room and spending the day in a hospital with my brother hovering over our father, I’m back at the cottage for the weekend and trying to be gentle on myself. Letting my husband take care of me, trying to remember to tell him know how much I appreciate him during all of this.

deer prints on beach

A few years ago, a neighbor saw a bear on our community road, less than a half mile from our cottage. She had a photo to prove it, and the community was buzzing about this bear as it was seen and photographed in other places nearby. This week, a different neighbor thinks they saw two bears on the beach in front of their cottage. They posted a photo of what looks (to me) like human footprints, but what do I know? Bears are somewhat new around here, I think.

That said, I walked the beach tonight and last night on high alert for bears. I only saw clear evidence of humans, dogs, birds, and deer. More deer prints on the beach than I can recall in other years, which makes me think there is a healthy deer population around here right now. While I’m out for a dusk beach walk, I’ll much rather see a cascade of deer coming down the dune to drink from the lake than a pair of bears, thankyouverymuch.

cold beach, wave patterns

I also love feathers, which there is never any shortage of here on the beach. Mostly seagull feathers, which for some reason I love the feel of in hand on a walk, particularly if it’s windy. A seagull feather is strong and won’t let you hold it any old way in the wind. Just try to hold it against the wind… it pushes back until you turn it sideways. It feels like a feat of perfect engineering, a miracle of strength that’s literally light as a feather.

I saw these small feathers as I walked tonight, washed up from the water, some soaked and sandy and some mostly dry. I’m not sure what kind of bird these are from, but the shading was striking.

small feathers (anyone know what kind of bird?)

I am reminding myself to breathe this weekend. To slow down, too. To not rush through everything just to get it done and behind me. To be patient with the things that aren’t mine to control. To drop a little of the perfectionism, too, and trust that I’m where I belong. I’m not entirely sure where the feathers and bears and deer come in here but maybe I should not be so worried about bears on the beach (but aware, of course) and remember to marvel in the beauty of feathers and watching deer come down to drink.

here we are, September

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September skies are different

Wow, August. You were a blur. A washout. A near total loss. I had high hopes for you! I had nearly a four-week break from classes and I had plans: a week with my kid and his partner, making peach and apple pies, a day-trip or two, long beach walks. Nope. I got Covid, or, more aptly, it got me. My first ever bout. Three and a half days off work (I should have taken more, but I’m stubborn), two nearly full weeks in bed (working), and five weeks later I still sound like I’m not quite right.

I’m just now getting back up to full throttle. Work is busy. My two classes are demanding. But the fog has cleared and I feel equipped to manage it all (mostly). But I completely missed the peaches, and I’m sad about it, because there’s not much better than a local peach that you’ve closed up in a paper bag to ripen, somehow protected it from the plethora of fruitflies that are the hallmark of a Michigan late summer, and then stood over the kitchen sink to eat while the drips run off your elbows.

Oh well. Next year, peaches. At least now there are apples! And hard squash! Oh, younger would me would be so shocked at my excitement over seasonal produce. There is a farm stand nearby that has the best honey crisp apples. I think I love honey crisp best… I buy them every year, but there are always new varieties to try. Whatever this apple seller has this year, I’ll branch out and try some other variety. Why not?

So, before the bout with Covid, I did get to spend a few days with my kid before I got sick (thankfully no one else caught it) just after that particularly spectacular lightning storm I wrote about in my last post. Those two days had their own magic. We laid under blankets on the deck watching the Perseid meteor shower at its peak, and the next day we anxiously checked, rechecked, then checked again so that we wouldn’t miss the monarch hatch from its chrysalis on our clothes line. Our vigilance paid off and we watched it push its way out of the chrysalis and unfurl its sloppy wings. What a show!

about a week before hatching
morning of hatching
wings dry, ready to go

So, okay, August wasn’t a total wash. While still recovering, that very last morning of August I woke up early for no good reason, alone in the cottage, and like most mornings looked out over the lake. But this morning the full moon (a blue moon, no less) was setting over a slightly hazy, purple-pinkish horizon. It’s always pretty amazing to catch the moonset over the lake but usually it’s under the cover of night.

August 31, morning moonset over Lake Michigan

Anyway, we’re past the halfway mark of September as I write this on a hazy, warm, quiet morning on the lake. Besides apples and squash, September has given us a few rainbows, and I’ve seen plenty of snakes on my walks (all garter, I think). The woods are loaded with fungi, too. Other surprises and delights so far this month: a few days with my brother (who I don’t get to see nearly enough), and while my dad was here last weekend he agreed to let us help him down (and back up) the 36 stairs to the beach! He’s 94, and I don’t think he’s made that trek in at least 15 years. We all celebrated.

Today I’m doing homework, taking a pause to read in a hammock, walking the beach, and making a soup from the tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, zucchini, onion and garlic I bought from a local market stand on Friday. I’ve been slowly shooting my way through a roll of Lomochrome turquoise in my Minolta X700. Maybe I’ll try to finish that roll off today on a wander and get that off to the lab this week.

I think it’s going to be a good day.

happy to see you, Friday

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Do you know those weeks where you’re just ticking off all the things on your to-do list, everything is falling into place at work, you’re ahead of schedule on things, nothing has slipped off your radar, and you’re just crushing your responsibilities?

This week has been just about the opposite of that. I’ve made mistakes at work. Steered a coworker wrong. Answered emails and chats (many, in fact) without reading the whole question, or even misinterpreting the question. Didn’t do prep work for a meeting. Dropped lots of work balls. Logged in to my live class on Tuesday night, after a total marathon of a day, only to realize I had the date wrong.

But it’s Friday morning now and I’m easing into my work day, doors and windows open while listening to the music of the birds and the crickets, and I’m pretty sure it’s mostly going to be okay. This semi-crappy week did have bright spots. I facilitated a group in one meeting and not only didn’t crumble from anxiety, but actually enjoyed myself. I owned my mistakes and apologized to the coworker I steered wrong. There is a pair of deer that keeps showing up on the beach in the evenings, and they have been a delight to watch. One of the resident eagles soared in front of the cottage during my Wednesday night class and landed briefly on the beach in front of me, while we were discussing employment at-will and how employees can or can’t be terminated in other countries.

Nobody gets it all right all the time, no matter what they say, and it’s too hard an ideal to live up to. I’m still working on learning my limits, knowing what to say no to, when to delegate, when to push, when to step back. I’m not afraid to be wrong, or to not know everything.

In that Wednesday night class, our professor encouraged us to engage in self-care this summer, despite our busyness and our commitments. This weekend, aside from catching up on homework and professional reading, I’m hoping to spend some time cleaning and taking care of the cottage I so love and appreciate. I have some poetry books I want to dig in to, and a short novel. I want to paint a little, just for fun, with no expectations. I want to nap in one of the hammocks behind the house, under the pines.

the calm serene

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Late spring, before the summer vacationers, when the sun warms the sand and skin just enough to barefoot walk the beach at near sunset. I’d say it’s my favorite time of year, but if you’ve read any of my posts over the years, you know how fickle I am. Every season, when I’m in it, is my favorite on Lake Michigan.

The giant, blooming lilac bush between our cottage and the neighbor’s is humming with life, bumblebees loud as tiny drones busy collecting pollen, honey bees, too, and yesterday an early monarch. Oh how I love the sounds and the smells coming from this bush! I could watch this microcosm all day.

Right now there are wildfires in Canada, and so the sunrises and sunsets create an odd haze, orange creamsicle orb rising behind the cottage and fading into the haze well before it reaches the horizon over the lake. Even the sliver, waxing moon and Venus are a soft, hazy orange.

The beach was quiet last night as we walked until we heard—well before we saw—this low-flying flock heading north over the lake. We stopped to watch and listen, falling quiet to fully take in the language of the geese. Are they shouting directions at each other? Comments, like in a group of cyclists where leaders point out road scrabble, bumps, holes? Is it encouragement, I wonder?

And then it was quiet again.

I finished a roll of film after work yesterday, something I think I’ve only done twice in the past several years, using busyness and lack of inspiration as excuses. I brought cameras with me, too; I have a dozen or more rolls of film just humming with potential. The world is heavy and beautiful, but hasn’t it always been heavy and beautiful? Isn’t there a defiance in celebrating the beauty in the midst of the heaviness? I might try that on for a bit.

itching for change

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Does anyone else feel like this right now? I feel so itchy. I want a change of some sort. I’m at the start of a new term, and classwork isn’t heavy yet. It’s spring—a weird in-between that currently is bringing greenery but not enough sun and warmth. It’s raining and grey, and I want to be outside. Work is busy, of course, but not hectic. Is it weird that I kind of like hectic? I love a long to-do list, even when I can’t tick everything off. Maybe especially when I can’t tick everything off.

I’m trying to be more mindful of money and stuff, what I do and don’t do with those things, how I respond to stressors by using those things. Wanting change makes me want to buy something to make it all feel better. “I need a new set of paints!” I tell myself, when the paints I have are sitting on my non-work desk, waiting for me to use them. “That handmade paper will make my painting so much better!” my brain shouts, when I’ve got a box of paper waiting to be used. “I need a new book!” when I’ve already got multiple books in progress. Oh, and I start perusing the internet for cameras that I don’t need (I’m barely using the ones I have). Art supplies. Online classes. A new hobby. Clothes. A haircut.

I don’t love that I look to outside sources to fill these holes, but I do, and I don’t think I’m alone. I think it stems from my youth, when money was so tight and those little extras were rare (but always celebrated and appreciated). I sometimes feel like I deserve them now, these little treats. But amassing more stuff while not using what I have? That’s not what I want. I used to marvel at people who said they felt bored. But, here I am, bored with my very existence and wanting change.

Last summer, in a small burst of creativity, I used a bunch of Cokin filters with a roll of color film, mostly taking photos on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Bold color filters and a super-speed filter (a chunky prism-looking thing that distorts half the frame, evoking movement). I love the muted colors in this image and the bright line created by the sun.

What I can do, I think, to appease this itch and make use of this weird energy:

  • Read the books I have
  • Make art with the supplies I have (I do not need more!)
  • Unsubscribe from emails to retailers that keep offering discounts on things I don’t need (I can always resubscribe later)
  • Use the cameras and film I have (and experiment more with the filters I have, because… fun)
  • Write a list every day and put the little, non-work things on it (make one postcard, read one poem or chapter, do this one self-care thing, etc.)
  • Declutter and offer things I’m not using to others who want or need them
  • Explore this feeling in writing (hello, ignored blog)
  • Cook more (and no, I don’t need any new pans or baking dishes or serving bowls thankyouverymuch)

These things sound fair, and doable, and smart if I do say so myself. And, since I drafted this post early yesterday, I even took a lunchtime paint break and made myself bookmarks for my class reading. I also used my favorite dutch oven, a pretty green Staub, to cook dinner—a one-pot cheesy lemon-ricotta pasta dish my daughter turned me on to.

So, do you feel like this right now, too? Are you exploring or ignoring that feeling? What are you doing to work with it?